David White – Becoming a rent officer

Whilst I was in that job I started interfacing with what they called Rent Officers. Now Rent Officers, er, were, I don’t think they still exist, Statutory Officers appointed by the Secretary of State to carry out independent impartial valuations of rental properties, so under the old 1977 Rent Act, if you, um, rented a house off your Landlord, either you or your Landlord could apply to have a fair rent determined by a Rent Officer.

That then becomes the maximum rent that the Landlord could charge and it was all brought about following some horrendous, er, private rental sector, um, issues in this country with some real rogue Landlords. 

Simon:  That’s the Rachman stuff. 

The Rachman exactly, his name always comes up so if he wanted his house for his buddy who’s just come out of prison, he’d march round that night and kick you, your kids and your furniture all out and there was really nothing in law to stop him, so that’s what the Rent Act, gave people security of tenure and a right to certain, to Landlords to fulfil their obligations. They in turn had to pay their rent on time and at the right amount.

So I took … I’d been meeting with Rent Officers, negotiating to get fair rent set for some of my properties and I thought, ‘That’s the job for me’ so I wrote to the Chief Rent Officer for Hampshire, a bloke called Roy Limbrick, er, and asked him if there were any vacancies and he said, “No” he said, “But when there are” he said, “We advertise in the Portsmouth Evening News so keep an eye on it” and a couple of months later there was an advert, er, I went for the job and cut a long story short I got it and I stayed there in the Rent Service in different guises until I retired, so I had 24 years in the Navy and 22 years as a Civil Servant and 18 months as a Property Manager.

So, yeah I ended up as National Health and Safety Manager for the Valuation Office which is what led on from being a Rent Officer but yeah, I did that job for 20 odd years and never looked back, I thoroughly enjoyed it. That was a good job and I retired in 2009 and I’ve had three or four jobs since.